With fall fast approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about hats lately. I am a Creativity and Life Coach and owner of a business called Art n Soul, Inc. (www.artnsoulinc.com), so people often come to me at transitional points in their lives…to try on a new hat, so to speak. I’ve had women on the verge of retiring from a state job come to me to start an ice cream shop. I’ve met with a woman in marketing who wanted to open a flower shop. I worked with a police officer who wanted to develop an on-line used car business. I’ve worked with women who have sold their businesses to explore the arts.

Whether your dream is of wearing a tiara and a crown or a cowboy hat or knit cap, the reality of owning a business is that you’ll ultimately wear many hats.

When I first started out, I thought I’d be coaching a few clients from home over the phone. The reality is that most people want to meet you to get to know you, so I put my networking hat on and went out and started selling myself and my business at leads groups.

Next, my business started to rapidly build. Clients asked for more things. Would you be able to conduct a workshop with me and some of my colleagues? Would you be able to do a weekend retreat on Cape Cod? How about a workshop in Israel? So, I put on new hats…my travel hat, my trainer hat, my event planning hat, and my organizational hat. Many of my clients are either artists or have a creative interest of some sort. They began asking me if I could help them create sales of their artwork, so I put my on-line marketing hat on and my gallery owner hat on. Pretty soon, my head was running out of room for so many hats!

Well, then the money started rolling in. I then put on my accounting hat and my legal hat and my tax hat and my administrative hat.

The dream of being a successful business owner was working, but the reality was that I was saying yes to everything and really needed to define what I did and didn’t want to do. So, now, I sometimes wear no hat at all.

I also encourage my clients to approach their dreams with conscious steps. I truly believe that it isn’t the fear of failure that holds us back, it is the fear of our success. The reality is that we’re more powerful than our wildest dreams. I truly hope that you get to wear each and every hat you want to wear.